The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Monday, 23 March 2015

Theories of Consciousness Must be Biological

When
did consciousness become a (fit) subject for science? According to
John Horgan (in his book The End of Science), it was as
recently as 1990 – only 25 years ago. This is how Horgan puts it:

“In
1990, Crick and a young collaborator, Christof Koch, a German-born
neuroscientist.... proclaimed in Seminars in the Neurosciences that
it was time to make consciousness a subject of empirical
investigation.” (16)

Following
on from that, it could be said that when consciousness became a
subject of science; it then also became acceptable subject for (some)
philosophers. (Or at least for those philosophers with scientific
credentials or who had a commitment to a strong science-philosophy
relationship.)

The
essential - and some would say obvious - point that Francis
Crick made is that the study of consciousness must be a biological
- therefore scientific - study. That is, it isn't about “arguing
over psychological concepts and definitions” (which is what
psychologists and philosophers do); but one of “lots of
experiments”.

According
to Crick, psychologists (as well as philosophers) “have treated the
brain as a black box, which can be understood in terms merely of
inputs and outputs rather than of internal mechanisms” (162).

So
it's all about the brain. In fact it's even more specific than that
in Crick's case.

As
Horgan puts it, “[n]eurons must be the basis for any model of the
mind” (162). In other words, it's all about neurons.

Gerald
Edelman (a Nobel laureate) is also said to hold the position that the
mind

“can
only be understood from a biological standpoint, not through physics
or computer science or other approaches that ignore the structure of
the brain”. (166)

(Clearly
this chimes with John Searle's biological philosophy of mind.)

Edelman,
to demonstrate his point, puts the seemingly extreme position of
“functionalists” (such as Marvin Minsky) who “say they can
build an intelligent being without paying attention to anatomy”
(166).

Two

There
is a simple reason as to why scientists and even philosophers must
now concentrate of the brain when it comes to questions about the
mind and consciousness. According to John Horgan, it's

“precisely
because philosophical approaches to consciousness have all failed
that scientists must focus on the brain” (181).

Indeed
another way of putting that is that these philosophical theories of
mind all failed (if that's the case) because they completely ignored
the brain!

Perhaps
philosophers didn't see the brain as being a fit subject for
philosophy or even for the philosophy of mind. Nonetheless, many 20th
century philosophers certainly did utilise the findings of brain
science (neuroscience); especially from the 1960s onwards.

The
obvious reason as to why philosophical theories about consciousness -
and perhaps the mind generally – are seen as problematic is that
they're all “untestable and therefore useless” (181). Indeed it's
said that highly sophisticated theories of consciousness (such as
those of David Chalmers) are in the same ball park as theories about
the Holy Ghost. Or as Christof Koch puts it:

“Why
don't you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes
down and makes you conscious!” (182)

In
fact he said that to Chalmers himself!However, Chalmers did reply to
Koch's rhetorical question. He said that the theory about the Holy
Ghost is “unnecessarily complicated” and that “it would not
accord with his own subjective experience”.